Fast Speeds, Faster Network at Indy500

The Greatest Spectacle in Racing certainly lived up to its name, with the 98th running of the Indianapolis 500 resulting in one of the closest finishes in race history. Ryan Hunter-Reay edged past Helio Castroneves in the final lap, crossing the famous brick line with a split-second margin and capturing his first Indy 500 title.

This year’s race saw nearly 150 laps run without a caution, leading to a thrilling finish. Cheers from the grandstand almost drowned out the sounds of the engines, and in the last few laps a back-and-forth battle after a crash led to an uncommon red flag stop. All of the cars lined up on pit road for a restart, and raced under the green flag until the checkered flag waved for Hunter-Reay.

In the heart of the action was the Verizon Technology Pit, located on Pit Road. As the hub for the Verizon Wireless LTE Multicast demo, the Technology Pit delivered live Multicast service for the first time over Verizon’s commercial 4G LTE network. The demo featured multiple video feeds, including the live race broadcast, numerous in-car cameras and various angles from around the track without buffering or latency, which is the amount of time (measured in milliseconds) that it takes for data on a network to reach its destination. This helped ensure that the pictures on the phone were there faster than they were on the TVs. The Verizon LTE Multicast interface allowed fans to seamlessly switch among them to experience racing in a whole different way. Each IndyCar team had a Verizon LTE Multicast-capable device to see first-hand how this technology might help them be more competitive. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

The 2014 Indy 500 also marked the return of former winner Juan Pablo Montoya, who was chosen as the winner of Verizon’s #whosgonnawin Twitter campaign.

With more than 250,000 spectators on the grounds of the Speedway for the race and for all the festivities leading up to the big day, the Verizon Wireless network delivered the mobile experience fans wanted both on and off the track.

Tweeting, texting, posting pictures and staying connected to the IndyCar 14 app, with all its information about the series, drivers and race, was easy, thanks to the Verizon Wireless network. In fact, John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and an Indianapolis native, was one of many who raved about the network. He tweeted, “Huge thanks to @Verizon for making it possible for me to tweet from the Indy 500, even though there are 250,000 people in a square mile.”